たけくらべ
Higuchi Ichiyo’s Takekurabe follows children in the streets beside the Yoshiwara pleasure quarter. Play, neighborhood rivalry and awkward affection gradually meet the adult futures shaped by families and livelihoods. Published in 1895–96, the story makes Midori and Shinnyo’s failures to communicate part of a wider account of growing up.
Seven installments appeared in 1895–96, followed by publication of the complete story in April 1896.
Homes, shops, school and temple connect the children to adult livelihoods.
The ending leaves important events and identities unstated.
The opening moves from Yoshiwara’s gate and ditch to nearby homes, rake makers, shops and school. The quarter’s economy reaches into these streets, but the story is not confined to brothel interiors. The children’s routes connect places of work, family and play.
The Ichiyo Memorial Museum describes her opening a shop for household goods and sweets in Shitaya Ryusenji-cho in 1893, then closing it and moving the following year. The museum relates this local experience to the story’s conception. Its characters and incidents remain a novelist’s creation.
Takekurabe appeared in Bungakukai in January, February, March, August, November and December 1895, then January 1896. Bungei Kurabu published the whole story in April 1896. The later edition used for Aozora Bunko’s electronic text is a separate stage in that publication history.
Midori’s elder sister is a successful courtesan at Daikokuya, and her parents also work within the quarter’s economy. Generous spending gives Midori influence among her companions. She takes pride in her sister’s prestige without yet understanding the suffering attached to that work or fully grasping the future others anticipate for her as a courtesan.
The studious Shinnyo is reserved and uneasy about his parents’ pursuit of income and business. He worries about what other children say, responding through silence and avoidance. His departure for religious schooling at the end continues the pressure of family and religious identity.
Shotaro lives with his grandmother. His mother has died, while his father has returned to his rural home. The family’s wealth gives him standing, but he also helps collect daily payments and feels sympathy for borrowers. Affection and the lending business sit together in his household life.
Sangoro’s poor family borrows from Shotaro’s household. Its home also sits within property and landlord relationships involving Chokichi’s father and the temple. Sangoro wants to join Shotaro’s companions while remaining exposed to the other group’s pressure. These obligations give neighborhood rivalry material force.
While Shotaro has gone home, Chokichi’s group attacks Sangoro at the brush shop. Midori intervenes and is hit with a muddy straw sandal. Chokichi invokes Shinnyo’s support, but the narrative later explains that Shinnyo was away on an errand to his sister’s home that night.
A later passage returns to the April sports day. Midori helped Shinnyo after a fall by lending her red handkerchief; classmates then teased them. He avoids her to escape further talk, while she understands his coldness as deliberate unkindness. Readers are allowed to see the gap between their interpretations.
In the rain, Shinnyo breaks a geta strap outside Daikokuya. Midori brings patterned crepe cloth but cannot speak, instead throwing it through the lattice. He notices it without picking it up. Chokichi later lends him his own geta, setting direct practical help beside the failed exchange.
The summer festival, autumn rain, Tori-no-ichi fair and frosty morning organize meetings and departures. The April sports day enters through flashback. Weather and street sounds mark change, while delayed explanation alters how readers understand an earlier action.
At the fair Midori appears with an elaborate oshimada hairstyle. She subsequently withdraws, cries and wishes to return to playing with dolls. The narration states her shame and resistance to growing up, but does not explicitly identify the event behind this sudden change.
One frosty morning someone leaves an artificial narcissus through the gate. The narrator says Midori does not know who did it. She places it in a vase, then hears that the following day is Shinnyo’s departure for religious school. The juxtaposition invites association without identifying the sender.
Midori insults Shinnyo but watches his retreating figure for a long time. Shinnyo feels drawn to the cloth yet cannot pick it up. Such passages ask readers to attend to dialogue, inward thought and visible behavior together, rather than waiting for an explicit declaration of affection.
Kaburaki Kiyokata read the complete story in 1896 and visited Ichiyo’s grave in 1900. His 1902 painting Ichiyo joshi no haka connects the grave with an imagined Midori. The museum presents it as an artist’s later response to the literature, with its own date and imaginative setting.
Through seven installments in 1895–96, followed by the complete story in Bungei Kurabu in April 1896.
His family’s borrowing and housing obligations expose him to competing neighborhood pressures.
No. The narrative later explains his absence on an errand, although Chokichi used his name.
No. He sees it but does not pick it up, then borrows Chokichi’s geta.
No. It places an artificial narcissus beside news of Shinnyo’s departure without identifying who left it.